Page 23 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“Literally yesterday,” Delina answers. “My mother set up a PO Box, they called me when it got too full because she didn’t clear it out.”

He grimaces, like this is a mistake made in loading the dishwasher, before his eyes dips to her hand. “You’re still warded.”

It’s not a question, but she’s known him long enough to hear it in his tone.

“Chloe, you’re good at undoing traps, mind letting me in?” he asks, and his voice is back to the casual Maison she knows, the one who chats about paint and hugs her when she’s feeling down. “Clearly, I need to explain some things.”

A big part of her wants to let him.

Instead, she just presses herself deeper into the doorway of the bedroom, throwing a glance over at the bio-trap.

Maison’s eyes follow her gaze, and he draws himself straight. “Don’t go in there,” he says, and she’s known him long enough to hear the distress in his voice.

It was the same distress that came out when they got in the car accident two years ago.

“Why not, Maison,” she says, and he obviously struggles with his words. “Worried you’ll get fired for not doing a good job?”

He flounders, visibly so, and she’s so used to helping when he does that it itches along her awareness. “We can still go back,” he says. “We can still go back to how it was before, as long as you don’t step in there.”

That settles it, firm in Delina’s chest, and she turns and strides into the room.

Behind her, Maison makes a wordless noise of agitation, and she can dimly hear Chloe and Gurlien exclaiming or arguing, but her eyes are just locked on the single spray paint of gold.

It’s harmless, more like a bad movie decoration on something too low budget for an art department. Like something Maison would call out as sloppy worldbuilding when they watched movies.

And somehow, it holds whatever her mother thinks is the key to her ‘potential.’ The potential that Maison thinks she shouldn’t have.

She tosses a look to him over her shoulder, then steps over the gold paint.

He flinches, like she struck him.

Immediately, sparks crackle up around her, snapping and vivid, spiraling up her ankles and her legs, sending pinpricks of sensation along her skin.

It’s not painful, necessarily, but it’s near to it.

She turns, so she’s facing out towards the door of the bedroom, but the world blurs outside the barrier of the circle, and all other noise falls away.

And she waits.

The sparks flicker over her skin, nestling into her arms and itching at her face, but she breathes out hard, shuddering, and the air catches in her throat.

She tries to form words, but no sound comes out, her throat as dry as the deserts in Arizona.

A shiver of dread drips down her spine, and the world jerks once, twice, then spins, tugging her legs out from underneath her.

A dim part of her fights whatever it is, fights falling to the ground, fights the onslaught of sensation and sparks and terror, before…

Darkness slams into her.

8

Nothing makes sense.

No, nothing feels like it makes sense.

Her arms ache, her legs ache, her head thuds with the pounding of her heart, and her eyes struggle against her to stay shut.

Above her, someone speaks and it’s not someone she knows.

---